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The Black Marker
The Black Marker is an alien artifact discovered on Earth by the Earth Government in 2208. It was then hidden to discourage alien belief, yet was brought to public knowledge by Michael Altman, who had been contracted to research the marker 200 years prior to Isaac Clarke's arrival on the USG Ishimura. Overview The Black Marker was initially found by Altman and a team of researchers in the asteroid impact crater off the coast of the Yucatan peninsula, Mexico. It was thereafter concluded that the Marker landed on Earth along with the asteroid that caused the extinction of the Dinosaurs millions of years ago.Dead Space: Martyr Altman's discovery of the Marker led his religion to grow faster than any other religion ever formed on earth. Altman was killed mysteriously and became a martyr figure to the religion's believers. The government is presumed to have killed him in an attempt to silence the truth about the Marker's true origins. The Black Marker is revered by Unitologists as an immensely powerful holy object which God has sent to show that death was not the end. Various tests on the Marker led to it being reverse engineered creating the Red Marker.Dead Space, Unitology Article The Black Marker's influence is similar to the Red Marker's. It was revealed in Dead Space Martyr, that there is a different force surrounding the Black Marker than just the ability to cause madness in humans. The hallucinations that are thought to be caused by the Marker are not caused by it at all. There are other forces at play. Altman thought that there was something in the human mind that caused the hallucinations; a kind of defense mechanism that is activated when in the Marker's presence. Altman was not immune, but he was able to resist the madness caused by it. Its existence had been known to the locals that lived near its resting place for generations, but was never spoken about to outsiders and was referred to as the "The Tail of the Devil". The locals tend to cross there index and middle fingers when speaking of it. (from the Dead Space Martyr novel) The Black Marker was classified government property and, although Unitologists worshipped it, they only appear to have had pictures and possibly the leaked vidlog from Altman. As most data was classified, their conjectures and the spun comments of the dead scientist Altman caused irrational, hysterical ideas about the Marker to gain momentum and the Unitology religion offering vague promises of hope for immortality, with apparent scientific credibility, excited some depraved people who became fanatics. The Church always wanted to get its hands on a Marker but did not possess one and had never deciphered one (the reason they were so excited by the Marker found on Aegis VII). If Unitologists continued to have access to a Marker, prior to the events of Dead Space, they must have had moles in Government, They weren't even sure if they were right about their claims, despite constructing a religion based on them. It is possible that the original Black Marker or another douplicate is located on the Sprawl, because as heard on the E3 trailer a man speaks to Isaac saying that he is seeing symbols. As we know the Marker is capable of creating hallucinations of other people and symbols as seen by all protagonists of Dead Space games (except Lexine to which she is immune). Gallery File:Marker.png|Emblem of the Black Marker, as seen on promotional Unitology posters File:Isaac_with_the_unknown_RIG.jpg|Monuments resembling the Black Marker in a Unitology church, as seen in Dead Space 2 Sources Category:Content